


Selfish

by ConstanceComment



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Introspection, relationship building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-18
Updated: 2012-09-18
Packaged: 2017-11-14 12:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/515156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConstanceComment/pseuds/ConstanceComment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are no endings. Only beginnings, starting again. We grow and change, and change again. This is the way of things. This is how it will have always been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Selfish

Once, he thought that regeneration was hard.

That acquiring a new personality in that way exacted a great toll on the mind, on the new body. Now he understands just how wrong he was. There was an ease in regeneration, a trust in the fact that he would still be unquestionably himself. But now he is the cast off, the one left behind. Except, that’s not right, is it, because he chose to stay. He chose to stay with her, to stay with Rose. To let himself have something good in his life, just for once.

One of the first things he decides to be is selfish, and he holds that thought, holds tight to the truth that he has made.

Whoever he is, he is selfish, and with all his heart he loves Rose Tyler. Not a bad place to be, he thinks.

Yet he is left with the fact that he did not spring fully formed from the minds of his genetic parents. Something inside him whispers, commanding; ‘physician, heal thyself,’ but he is not if that is who he is any longer. And so he’s been left, trying to sort himself out; Time Lord, human. Donna, Doctor. Something new and different that has arisen between all those poles. He is finding, slowly, that something does not have to equal the sum of its parts. It may be that things are only ever more and never any less.

Piece by piece, he is becoming his own person. Never has he thought about himself so deliberately for so long, a fact that may explain why his regenerations were always so difficult in the past. He is learning himself all over again as if for the first time. He discovers quickly that he needs his own space and clings to it, probing the holes in his mind, the gaps and tears where Donna and the Doctor could not weave together, alien minds not meant to meet. Moreover, he is stunned to realize that the silence in his head no longer aches. In his mind there is no longer a ringing, festering wound where his people used to be. Nor is there the keening-lovely-discordant echo of the TARDIS singing through the universe. Instead there is only quiet in his mind now, quiet and the music of his own thoughts.

It is a novelty. It should set his teeth on edge, but it doesn't. It is bewildering, it is disorienting, it is cruel. But he finds that he craves it just the same. For the first time, the loneliness does not hurt. Perhaps, it is because he is no longer truly alone.

Still, he refuses to let Rose come near him. He doesn't want to let anyone too close, really. There is something in him that wants his personal reality to be his own this time around and he is not sure if that urge is something Donna, or if it is something new. Something his.

Meanwhile, Rose tries, she does, she really does but they're so awkward and they've never been awkward. Not in a long time. Not since he regenerated and- oh. Oh.

She steps back; she waits, trying to be patient, thinking of a mother who waited all her daughter's life to see her husband again. Thinking of a father she has come to know, come to love. Watching them stand together, held close in each others' orbit, spiraling out only to drift in again, even the most vicious of their rows unable to separate them for long. She decides that if they could wait, if they could relearn to love one another, these familiar strangers so different and the same, then so can she. She is Rose Tyler; she has saved the universe more times than many have had hot meals. Hers is the will that rewrote time, and changed the shape of nations. She can wait. She has already waited for years.

And so in the space she leaves him, carefully he changes, at last using his tentative balance to stand, rising to meet her. She smiles, and takes his hand.

“Hello.” She says.

“Hello.” He says, smiling back. Her hand is warm in his, but not unbearably so. Her palms are rough with work and his are smooth and soft.

This is something new. This is something he can keep.

It’s like meeting an old friend for the first time.


End file.
